Australia announced, on Tuesday, that it will ban the TikTok application on government electronic devices, joining a growing list of Western countries that have preceded it in this action against the application owned by a Chinese company due to national security concerns.

Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfuss said the decision was made in the light of advice from the country's intelligence agencies, and implementation would begin "as soon as practicable".

Australia is the latest member of the "Five Eyes" intelligence coalition, which includes the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, to impose a government ban on TikTok.

France, the Netherlands and the European Commission have taken similar decisions.

Electronic security experts have warned of the possibility of using the application, which has more than a billion users and has been very popular recently, to collect data and share it with the Chinese government.

TikTok returned the ban to "xenophobia", but in December last year it admitted to collecting data to spy on journalists.

Many government departments were initially keen to use TikTok as a means of communicating with younger demographic segments that are difficult to reach through traditional media.

Earlier this year, the Australian government announced that it would remove Chinese-made security cameras from politicians' offices over security concerns.